German far-right AfD MPs stage mass walkout during Holocaust memorial service

Members leave chamber following accusation that party is 'downplaying crimes of Nazis'

MPs from Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party staged a walk out from the Bavarian parliament during a service to remember Holocaust victims, after it was accused of playing down the crimes of Nazis.

After Charlotte Knobloch – the former head of Germany‘s Central Council of Jews – told the chamber that the AfD based its policies on “hate and marginalisation”, more than a dozen state politicians made a point of walking out.

She said the party had “downplayed the crimes of the Nazis and has close connections to the extreme right”.

MPs from rival parties gave her speech a standing ovation as their AfD colleagues walked out of the parliament.

Katrin Ebner-Steiner, head of the AfD’s parliamentary party in Bavaria, said it was an “appropriate response”, before accusing Ms Knobloch of abusing “a memorial service for the victims of the Nazis in order to defame the complete AfD and its democratically elected representatives with the worst blanket insinuations”.

Others, including Katharina Schulze, a Greens leader in Bavaria, praised the “clear and truthful words” of her tribute.

Markus Söder, minister-president of Bavaria, also criticised the “disrespectful” actions of the AfD’s members.

Ms Knobloch, who was speaking ahead of Sunday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, survived Second World War by hiding in the Bavarian countryside.

AfD members have a long history of inflammatory comments regarding the actions of the Nazis.

Charlotte Knobloch, Holocaust survivor and former head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, speaks at the Bavarian Parliament in Munich (AP)

In 2018, the party’s co-leader dismissed the period as a “speck of bird poo in more than 1,000 years of successful German history”.

AfD co-founder, Alexander Gauland, also said in 2017 that Germany had “the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars”.

He added: “People no longer need to reproach us with these 12 years. They don’t relate to our identity nowadays.”

The AfD came third in the country’s 2017 national election after campaigning strongly against immigration.

It is now Germany’s biggest opposition party nationally.